Project Microburst
Project Microburst was a highly classified project initiated by the Southern Meteorological Service and carried out at the Mobius Research Station in the antarctic reaches of Micras, with the stated purpose of developing technology to manipulate weather for the purposes of generating power, including the generation of tornadoes, thunderstorms, and blizzards. Following foreign concerns regarding the environmental impacts of weather manipulation (and the confederacy's inability to convince them of the sustainability of the confederacy's methods of weather manipulation), the confederacy relocated weather experiments to the south sea away from all inhabited areas. The project was put on hold 22.XIV.1680, as the Mobius Station put all efforts toward Project Zion.
Tornado Generation
The project's first objective was to create a device capable of generating tornadoes, ostensibly for the purposes of building a natural solar chimney to enhance the power generation of power plants that require a cooling stack by creating a "bottoming cycle" to recycle heat. The first hypothesis on the feasibility of this engine would be known as the "Vortex Engine with Intrinsic Locomotion" (VEIL) device that would create a localised blast of hot hair (while the device was lodged in a drone utilising verakium hover technology) which would then be "whipped" by wind cannons in order to form a circular vortex. Naturally, the first phase of the project would be the creation of the wind cannon, which, though they had been proposed in numerous military and weather projects previously, had never had a successful design implemented due to decreasing interest. Early testing proved this more elementary than previously thought.
The project successfully created artificial tornadoes and a way to command and control them in XII.1680. The breakthrough dispelled thoughts amongst the administration of the project that it was a waste of money, and allowed the project to move swiftly on to its second phase, with instances of the VEIL device and associated small wind cannons being transported to the confederacy to be tested in real power stations. Estimates say that the artificial vortices would increase power station output by 17-23%.
Thunderstorm Formation
The project moved on to its second phase of testing following the success of the first phase, wherein the project leaders assigned the task of creating an artificial thunderstorm. Given that the confederacy already possesses a satellite capable of utilising electrolaser technology, the challenge presented to the team researching the project was less of a way to generate the lightning of a thunderstorm, and more in line with a method of cloud generation in order to produce the conditions necessary for a thunderstorm to form.
